


Tempest

by KareliaSweet



Series: Storms [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Monster Hunters, Monsters, fairytale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:48:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9455717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KareliaSweet/pseuds/KareliaSweet
Summary: Will Graham is seven years old when he sees his first monster. It is not his last.orThe Origin of Will Graham, Fearsome Monster Slayer, and His Lover, the Ravenstag.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The is a prequel to Where Are the Storms I Was Promised, but should be read after.

“Papa, there’s a monster in the garden.”

Rain patters against the walls of the cabin. The grandfather clock beats out its basso tick in the hallway. Robert Graham leans back in his rocking chair with a creak and turns another page of his book.

“No monsters out there, my boy.”

Will turns from his tiptoed perch at the window, his face pale. “I see him, Papa.”

Robert gently closes his book and walks to the window. The woods outside are dark and wet. Will grabs up at him and Robert hoists him onto his hip, letting Will clutch onto him with desperate, trembling limbs.

“There’s nothing out there, Will. Just your eyes playing tricks.”

Will shakes his head violently. Robert holds his son tighter and strokes top of his head.

“Come, it’s bed time. I’ll read you the story you like, hm?”

Robert feels the little nod into his shoulder and he smiles. He takes a last look out the window, just as lightning flashes.

In the two seconds that the clearing behind the house illuminates, Robert sees it. Golden eyes, horns that curl like a great ram’s. Pale, leathery wings streaked with red.

Thunder rumbles around the cabin.

“But I marked all the trees…” Robert whispers.

He puts his son down and crouches low, gripping his shoulders.

“Run, Will.”

“But, Papa--”

“There’s no time. Go where I told you. You’ll be safe there.”

Robert unsheathes the hunting knife he keeps strapped to his side even in sleep. Will starts to cry. Robert shakes him gently.

“Do not cry, boy. Be brave.”

Will nods mutely, his face streaked and wet. Robert stands, towering over him.

“Now go!” Robert yells.

Will runs.

He runs out the front door and through the trees, pine and bark scratching his arms. He runs until his legs hurt and his chest burns and he has to gasp for his breath in great, aching gulps. He runs until the rain soaks through to his bones, until his feet are bruised and cracked and bleeding.

And then he keeps running.

Will Graham is seven years old when he sees his first monster.

It is not his last.

-x-

Madame DuMaurier takes decent enough care of him. She keeps him fed, and clothed, gives him a bed to sleep in.

She does not read him stories the way Papa did. She keeps no grandfather clock with its comforting thunk-tock. There is no rocking-chair, no lap to curl up in. But the house is secure, at the top of the hill. There are many locks on the doors. And Will is alive.

She sends him to school, with the instruction that he learn of more than just monsters.

“Your father,” she said, “though heroic, was myopic to the end.”

At school, Will asks for the big dictionary. He looks up _heroic_ , then _myopic_.

He decides to be the first thing, when he grows up.

Madame is not kind, but she is fair. They often go days without speaking to one another, and neither minds. Will excels in his classes, spends his evenings in Madame’s library poring over the books they won’t let him touch in school. He reads of the monsters his father hadn’t told him about. He learns how to harm them, how to kill. Madame does not disapprove of his studies, but nor does she encourage them. On evenings when he’s still reading at the turn of midnight, she stands in the doorway with a candle, her blond hair loose around her shoulders.

“Enough now,” she says coolly, and Will nods and goes to bed.

Years pass without incident. Madame beats him only once, when Will tells his entire class that his father was killed by a dragon and that none of them are as safe as they think.

“I didn’t lie!” Will shrieks as the belt comes down on his skin.

“Of course you didn’t,” Madame says evenly, “but sometimes the truth must be punished.”

When Will turns fifteen, Madame presents him with a gift. A hunting knife, almost identical to his father’s.

“You are old enough for it now,” she says, “use your knowledge well.”

“I will not be myopic,” Will replies.

Madame smiles at him for the first time. She presses her thumb into his cheek.

The Great Storm comes not long after.

Rain sluices through the town streets, flooding the marketplace and the little shacks behind it. Will watches from atop the hill as mud slicks the cobblestones, as trees uproot themselves and fall with heavy sighs into the road. The skies grow dark, swelling with grey.

Will can smell Death coming.

He watches from the library window overlooking the garden, every night. Madame stops issuing his midnight curfew, only stands in her robe with her fingertips at the doorjamb before passing on.

“He will not come,” she says once.

“There are no trees to mark here,” Will says, “or is there darker magic you keep hidden?”

Her eyes flash, but she does not reply.

The Dragon comes on the fifth day of the storm. His wings have turned a brownish-crimson under the heavy rain. Will unsheathes his knife and climbs down the stairs. Madame is waiting for him at the garden door.

“Watch for his teeth,” she says, and presses her thumb into his cheek.

Will nods, and walks out into the rain.

The fight is brutal. The dragon snarls, blood and spittle hanging from his maw. Will charges with his knife and gets an answering club to the head, sending him flying backwards through the muddy grass. He climbs to his feet again and charges, feinting to the left as the dragon snaps its jaws. He manages to land a decent slash to the dragon’s chest, and he whoops out a war cry as he watches the blood spill out, black under the moonlight. The dragon yowls in anger and takes to the air.

This is his mistake. The heavy rain makes his wings sluggish, and as hard and fast as he beats them he cannot lift far enough from the ground.

Will bares his teeth and launches.

He lands on the dragon’s tail and plunges the knife in. There is an unearthly roar and the dragon turns, biting fiercely. Will ducks and climbs further up the dragon’s back, withdrawing his knife to slash it across the dragon’s stomach. The dragon gives out a piercing shriek and snaps again. One sharp fang pierces Will’s cheek. They tumble back to the ground in a fierce embrace, screaming, and even through the white-hot pain Will scrabbles further up the dragon’s body. He digs the knife deeper, dragging it through flesh and scales and tendon, scraping against bone, his hands sticky and warm with blood. There is one last mournful howl, and then nothing.

The Great Red Dragon is dead.

Its fang is still lodged in Will’s cheek and the pain hits him threefold, but he doesn’t care. Euphoria is singing through his veins. He shoves at the dragon’s jaw and frees himself with a grunt, then drags himself through the grass, caked in dirt and blood. He crawls to the door, where Madame stands, waiting.

She nods at him and disappears inside.

Will Graham is fifteen years old when he kills his first monster.

It is not his last.

-x-

It takes little time for Will Graham to become a legend. He doesn’t like it.

He leaves his town shortly thereafter, partly because he knows the people are safe now, and partly because he has no desire to be worshipped.

“There is a difference between being heroic and being a hero,” Will tells Madame as they part ways.

She looks at him approvingly, her face still as austere and unlined as it was the day he met her. Her blond hair waves softly in the breeze.

“How very un-myopic of you,” she murmurs.

Will smiles. She presses her thumb into his cheek.

“Good luck, Will Graham.”

They do not see each other again.

Word of the Dragon Slayer soon reaches the next town, and the next. It isn’t long before he is called upon to slay his next monster: a lycanthrope that has been terrorizing the village of Hobb and killing their young women. Will kills it and accepts a modest payment, insisting they give him just half of what they offer.

“I only need to eat,” he says, “and keep the clothes on my back.”

He does not tell them of the guilt he feels. How he cannot accept money for doing something that he… _enjoyed_.

He makes his home in a cottage by the sea. He names it ‘Wolf Trap’, because although Will Graham possesses a great many qualities, a good sense of humour is not one of them. He lives simply, on fish that he catches himself, root vegetables from his garden. He cares for the stray dogs that mill about his back door, feeds them fish heads and scraps of meat. He names the friendliest one Winston. Sometimes he lets Winston sleep inside when the night is cold and the rain is hard.

It is a simple life. He answers the requests when they come to him, kills the monsters, returns home. If, sometimes, he keeps a piece of monster as a talisman, no one remarks upon it. Villagers are willing to turn a blind eye to such things in the face of overwhelming gratitude. Besides, superstitions being what they are, why would a Monster Hunter not take a trophy for himself? A claw, or a fang.

Or a skull.

Things go wrong precisely once. He is called to dispatch a revenant who has murdered a girl in her bed. Something sits odd with Will before he even arrives at the town of Muth, but he shakes it off.

He should have listened.

He tracks the revenant to its lair, a small cavern near a lake. When it looks up at him, it does so with the sad eyes of a girl – barely more than a child – though the eyes are sunken into dark cavernous sockets.

“What are you?” Will asks her.

“Georgia,” the girl says.

She’s not human, but not quite dead. He tries to bring Georgia back to town, but when he makes a grab at her a sheath of skin sloughs off her arm, and she shrieks and slips into a crack in the cavern too narrow for him to squeeze through.

He goes back to the town and explains.

“She’s a Hybrid,” he explains, “I think she can be saved. Does anyone here practice magic?”

The villagers scorn him. They return to the cavern with torches and throw them in one after the other. Her screams as she burns haunt Will’s dreams.

He returns to the cavern under the cloak of night when the fire is out, to pay his respects. He retrieves her bones and cleans them, arranging them at the mouth of the cavern to ward off sacrilegious poachers. He keeps her skull as a reminder of his mistake.

Will makes a rule after that: No Hybrids.

Time goes on, in months and then years. He slays kelpies and vukodlaks and hellhounds. One nasty encounter with a coven of harpies leaves him with a swath of scars across his back. A dhampir tries to turn him but loses its head instead. The scars accrue, healing and mottling over only to be joined by fresh ones. Will doesn’t mind them. Each one marks a new kill, and each kill sends blood pumping through his veins.

It is a simple life. If Will relishes in his vanquishing a little more each time, no one is the wiser. If sometimes he gets a little messy, if there is perhaps too much blood than there ought to be, no one complains. After all, a dead monster is a dead monster. Blood must be spilled. And if Will chooses to let the blood dry and turn brown against his skin before he scrubs it off, well… he’s already long gone by then. No one sees.

No one knows what Will Graham really is.

Then the Ravenstag comes.

The town of Chesapeake summons him to slay a Wendigo. He makes the journey on foot, marking the trees as he goes. The town doctor greets him at the gates.

“The Fearsome Dragon Slayer,” the doctor says, shaking his hand. “I am glad you have come.”

Will ignores the hand and scowls.

“My name’s Will Graham, not Fearsome Dragon Slayer.”

He knows he’s being churlish but he despises sycophants. The doctor just smiles with a crinkle of his eyes.

“I know your name, Will. Come with me.”

The doctor is hospitable enough to offer up his home as temporary lodging. He takes Will to his guest room, an overlarge space with a wide window overlooking the forest behind it. There is a wardrobe hung with neatly pressed clothes, far nicer than any Will has ever worn.

“I don’t need these,” Will grumbles.

“Of course you don’t,” the doctor says, “but they are yours while you are with me.”

The doctor makes him dinner that evening, a hearty stew with a rich wine sauce. The chunks of meat are juicy and tender.

“What is this?” Will asks.

“Rump,” the doctor says with a smile.

They take drinks in his study after, honeyed brandy for the doctor and aged whiskey for Will.

“Tell me, Will.” The doctor draws fingers around the rim of his glass. “Do you enjoy what you do?”

Will swallows. “It’s a good thing to rid the world of monsters.”

“But that isn’t what you do.” The doctor leans back in his armchair, crossing his legs at the knee.

“What do I do?”

“You kill.”

The doctor’s brown eyes catch in the firelight and for a moment they flash red. The shadows of the flame lick at his cheekbones and for the first time in his weary life Will finds himself thinking someone beautiful. He takes a long sip from his cup and looks away.

“I kill,” he says slowly, “because I must.”

“An answer within an answer,” the doctor says, “and neither the answer to my question.”

“Are we going to talk in riddles all fucking night?” Will snips.

The doctor actually raises his eyebrows at that, before he lets his smooth, polite mask slip back over his face.

“You must be tired, Will. You’ve taken a long journey today.”

Will drains his cup. “Yeah, I... I think I'll go to bed. Thank you for dinner.”

“It is my pleasure.”

Will tries not to think of what the doctor’s pleasure entails, but his cheeks flush hot all the same. He winds his way up the wooden staircase to his room, where he strips down to his undergarments – ignoring the navy satin pajamas laid out for him – and crawls into bed. He palms at his swelling hardness beneath the sheets, an unfamiliar feeling after having gone so long without, and wills it away with thoughts of a burning girl’s screams. His arousal dissipates quickly, but there is still _something_ humming beneath his skin.

He tries to force himself into slumber, but the bed is too comfortable, the sheets too soft. It isn’t what Will is used to. He tosses and turns fitfully, and in the middle of the night he climbs out of bed to open a window, hoping the cool night air and the sound of cricket-song will lull him to sleep.

Will cracks the window open and swings it wide. He looks out into the night and goes still.

The Wendigo is outside.

It stares up at him, red eyes peering from a gaunt black face, its antlers twisting long and thin from its temples. Pointed, clawlike hands extend almost graciously from its limbs, and its skin shines oil-slick in the moonlight.

It’s… beautiful.

Will leaves his room, descending the staircase and walking barefoot to the forest edge. He does not bring his knife.

The Wendigo stands, waiting. It tilts his head.

“Hello,” Will says, “Doctor Lecter.”

The Wendigo seems to smile at this, and its antlers shrink into its head as its skin ripples into something more human.

“That didn’t take you long,” the doctor says.

Will smirks and arches an eyebrow. “I’m a Monster Hunter. It’s my fucking job.”

“Then why didn’t you bring your knife?”

“You intrigue me.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

They stare at each other. The doctor is looking at him as though he is a rare, exquisite find from a distant land.

“You never answered my question.”

Will frowns. “What question?”

“Killing. Do you enjoy it?”

 _No_ , Will wants to say, _of course I don’t. How dare you ask me such a question when you’re a fucking monster yourself_.

Instead, the doctor stares at him, through him, and Will is lost and found all at once.

“ _Yes_.” The answer exhales out of him, a great relief. Will suddenly feels light, as though years of weight have separated themselves from his shoulders and dissolved into the night air.

Hannibal just smiles.

“What are you?” Will asks.

“A great many things. Would you like to see?”

Will nods mutely.

The doctor tips his head back and feathers begin to plume from his skin. A new set of antlers sprout forth, thicker and coated in velvet. His limbs elongate and hooves form around his closed fists. Where seconds before had been a man, a great stag with the feathers of a raven now stands.

Will’s breath catches in his throat. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“…Can I touch you?”

The Ravenstag bows its head. Will runs his fingers over the tips of the antlers, combs them through the feathers, strokes his palm over the creature’s soft cheek.

“You’re amazing,” he breathes. The Ravenstag makes a low, pleased sound in its throat.

_Please, call me Hannibal._

He doesn’t hear the words so much as feel them, and they pour through his veins like sweet wine. Will shivers in delight.

“Remarkable.”

_Yes. You are._

The Ravenstag shakes its great mane then, and feathers fly off, coiling around Will’s skin. It feels like the touch of a lover. Slowly, the feathers recede and the Ravenstag rears up onto its hind legs, its stature decreasing as it transforms into the doctor once again.

Will stares at him, speechless.

“I think it is time to retire to bed,” the doctor says. “Tomorrow you must slay a demon, after all.”

Will chuckles, his heart pounding at the nearness of this captivating man. This beautiful monster.

They climb the stairs together, but when Hannibal heads left to his quarters, Will follows him. Hannibal turns in mild surprise.

“You said ‘time to retire to bed’,” Will says. He looks up at Hannibal with dark, wanting eyes. “You didn’t say which one.”

Hannibal takes a hitching breath, his hand reaching out to cup Will’s elbow. They stand together for one ephemeral moment before Hannibal lunges, crowding Will back against the bannister and burying his mouth in Will’s throat. Will groans and slips his fingers through the fine ends of Hannibal’s hair.

“You are beyond what I imagined,” Hannibal says into his skin. “I fear you will be my undoing.”

Will laughs and pulls Hannibal back with a sharp tug.

“Not if you’re mine first.”

The kiss they share then is soft, a whisper of a thing. Then Hannibal swings Will up into his arms and all thought of softness is forgotten.

Will meets the villagers the next day, hears their stories of plight and woe. Instead of feeling pity, however, he finds himself filled with distaste and irritation. This village is plagued with rudeness and cowards. Not one person among them has offered their help to the ones who have suffered. When one villager goes on a thoroughly boring and unnecessary tangent about cheese, Will ignores him completely. Instead he casts his mind back instead to the memory of hands hot on his skin, a mouth caressing him in dark secret places. Hannibal joins him there in his mind, his naked skin sliding against Will’s, fingers dipping into the groove of his hips and holding fast.

 _I miss you_ , Hannibal’s voice says in his ear. Will bites his tongue so hard it hurts. The villagers look at him strangely and Will excuses himself back to his lodgings.

Hannibal makes him dinner that evening, and Will devours it.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” Will asks as he licks sauce from the corner of his mouth.

Hannibal just lifts his glass in a toast.

He lets Hannibal take him that night, lets Hannibal open him with slick fingers and thrust inside him with measured strokes. He clings to Hannibal with all of his limbs and cries out as he strikes something within him that is both holy and damned, and when he comes it is with the name of his salvation on his lips. Hannibal kisses him, bites him, consumes him and fills him with his love as sure as he destroys him.

Afterwards, as they cool and tangle, they decide what must be done.

“The village?”

“Is already dead,” Will concedes, “you decided that before you met me.”

“And you?”

“Every Monster Hunter has The One That Got Away. It’ll add to my mystery.”

“I will be your Great White Whale?”

Will turns to Hannibal with shrewd eyes. “If you make a Moby Dick joke, I _swear_ —“

The finger he points in Hannibal’s face is gently kissed, then bitten, then sucked between Hannibal’s pleasantly curving lips. Will bites back a moan and rolls back as he lets Hannibal take him apart all over again.

“I can make you what you wish to be,” Hannibal says quietly as dawn curls around them. Will coils himself further in the web of his arms.

“I wish to be yours,” he murmurs.

Hannibal nuzzles him tenderly. “You are that, already.”

Will shakes his head, stilling his hand from where it was tracing patterns in Hannibal’s skin.

“Yours completely.”

Hannibal goes very still. “It will hurt.”

“I know.”

“Terribly.”

Will kisses the spot over where Hannibal’s heart should beat.

“I know.”

They take the village together the next night, under the cover of a storm.

Screams ring out into the air like the peal of bells, but the thunder swallows them whole. They work in effortless tandem from door to door, a fresh patina of gore painting them with each visit. The rain tries to wash it away but they collect too much, too fast.

They spare the children. A mutual agreement.

When all is done, they stand at the end of the forest, and Hannibal kisses the blood from his mouth.

“Are you ready?”

Will nods, panting and so, so alive. Lightning strikes. Before him, the Ravenstag appears and lowers its head.

Even as the antlers gore through him, Will feels nothing but love.

He awakens in a small shack, his abdomen tightly bound. Hannibal sits in a rocking-chair, reading a book. He turns the pages slowly and thoughtfully. The chair creaks gently. Will can hear the wind whistling through the trees.

“Hannibal,” he says. It feels like the first word he’s ever spoken.

Hannibal looks up and smiles with all of his teeth.

“How do you feel, my darling?”

Will grins back in reply, and as he does he feels fangs slowly descend. He gingerly touches one with the tip of his finger, hissing as he draws blood.

“Sharp.”

He sucks his finger into his mouth.

“Save some for me,” Hannibal purrs.

Will withdraws his finger with a wet pop and opens his arms. Hannibal catches up his hand, sucking at the finger lewdly before he snakes his way up Will’s body and captures his lips in a kiss. Their tongues dance hungrily, and Hannibal lets his own catch on Will’s fang, filling their mouths with blood. They moan and swallow each other down.

Will breaks the kiss, nosing along Hannibal’s jaw.

“What did you make me?” He gasps in awe.

Hannibal bites a deep bruise at his neck.

“Whatever you want to be.”

Will Graham is twenty three years old when he loves his first monster.

It is his last.

**Author's Note:**

> I do nothing by halves, apparently. The language in this is certainly more evocative of a fairytale than the previous piece, but that is how this story chose to be told *bashful shrug*. Comments & kudos, as always, are love!
> 
> ETA: THANK YOU all so much for the lovely 'welcome back' comments on the previous piece. It means the world to me and I love writing for this fandom so much because of wonderful folks like you. <3


End file.
